After fruitless attempts to discover the etymology of _cardo_,[152] it occurred to me that as the other names of winds, and, consequently, of the points of the compass, had been derived from those of the countries across which they blew,[153] so might this be a geographic term, and might be found to the north of Sabea or Chaldæa. The mountain on which the human race took refuge from the deluge is so placed, and bore this very name.[154] Cardo was then the primitive geographic point for the countries which were the cradle of the human race and the nurseries of science, and the term could only be derivative in Italy. The north star was the Kiblah of the Sabeans.[155] Two people severally discovered the various branches of naval architecture and navigation. The ends were attained by both; the means they used were wholly different, both belonging to the earliest constituted societies, both from periods antecedent to history, navigating the Indian ocean. They alone constructing vessels of large burthen, alone possessing that navigation. The word “Phœnician,” is a great stumbling-block in these inquiries. There was no people so called. It is a word of Greek invention[156] and construction. As there were Carthaginians or inhabitants of Carthage, so were there inhabitants of Tyre, and inhabitants of Sidon. The Cerathians, who occupied the adjoining territory, were simply “citizens,” as distinguished from the “Nomades,” or “Skenites,” and Perizzites, the inhabitants of “unwalled villages.”[157] The word Phœnix, or red, is identical with Adam, Edom, or Erythria. The Greeks so called them as coming from the Red Sea. In the time of Alexander, the Greeks found that they were also settled on the Persian Gulf, and that there was the metropolis, of which the Sidon and the Tyre of Syria were the daughters, as of these in subsequent times another progeny was to be found in Leptis, Utica; Carthage, Carthagena; Troy on the Scamander, and Tor in Devonshire. For the word Phœnician we must then substitute, or by it we must understand, “Sea-faring Arab.” The tribe which took to these enterprises, had of course its early establishments on the Red Sea, the southern shores of Arabia, the Persian Gulf, that is, on Arabian soil, then it would reach to the Persian and Abyssinian coasts. The next stage would be the shores of the Mediterranean. They would construct on that sea such vessels as those with which they navigated the Indian Ocean, and are thus celebrated by the Greeks as the inventors of ships. There is therefore no difficulty in placing the Phœnicians, in so far as antiquity is concerned, on a level with the Chinese, and in so far as geography is in question, on the same field of navigation and commerce. Yet the two systems are as opposite as it is possible for the imagination of man to conceive.